Gradual demise, very poor senior leadership and extremely under resourced
Pros
A lot of great experiences and diverse range of opportunities if you can stick it out. Working with the regional staff is amazing. Many passionate and inspirational people doing amazing things with very little.
Cons
The current executive have been quite destructive and don't seem to have any idea about land management or how to manage such a complex and diverse portfolio of parks and waterways. So many poor decisions that lead to lesser outcomes. Eg. Outsourcing project management resulting in staff having to train and retrain expensive consultants/project managers who then leave cos it's too complex. Process starts again. The constant turnover wastes so much major project funding with no actual delivery. Former In-house project management understood the complexity and delivered while also spending budgets wisely. Management also outsourced printing and signage with 11% premium on top when budgets already not enough to cover it. Now can't afford to print basic visitor guides/park notes so they don't print them at all. Don't try and find ways to make money either. Won't be supported. Funding from State Govt. is severely undercooked. My department budget was cut to $0. I mean seriously... how are you supposed to do your job when you don't have a properly resourced function. The Corporate strategy is vague at best and reflects how poorly the senior management understand what they do and it provides very little direction. You basically have to work it out yourself. Regional staff need much more support/resourcing to do their jobs properly. Parks are so tired and poorly maintained as a result. Innovation and strategy are stifled/discouraged by poor management/culture/policy/procedures. Big decisions made without consultation or understanding of implications. Culture is a mess. Exec focus leadership programs on the staff and essentially blame shift poor culture... "your tree casts a shadow"... "you need to make sure your shadow is good"... but not prepared to look at their own despite most leadership and culture influence coming from the top. Annual staff surveys come back with very low scores for Trust and Transparency EVERY YEAR!!! They seem to make it worse rather than improve. Definitely made worse by trying to covertly retrench staff across the corporate teams without communicating it - even though staff talk to each other and clearly knew about it. Hiding is not an effective communication strategy. Also not up front about massive funding cut from State Govt. and no leadership about how they are dealing with it. Not only that but they clean out all the people who know what they're doing/have extensive experience and replace them with poor hires/bad fits that just don't get it. Sometimes it's like they're actively trying to destroy the organisation deliberately. I could go on cos quite frankly this is the tip of the iceberg but to summarise... Parks Victoria is broke and broken. Without new leadership and a massive ongoing funding injection into the operational budgets nothing will change anytime soon.
